4 trends in the IT recruitment by Stas Shihov

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As per tradition, we talk about the most important trends in IT recruitment in the last 12 months. We have asked Stas Shihov, CEO at ITExpert, about how companies can stay competitive for IT specialists, which offers were attractive for consideration in 2021 and how to keep a high level of OAR.

Stas Shihov is CEO and founder of IT recruitment agency ITExpert. Stas has been working for more than 6 years in this field, helping clients to find the right people, choosing recruitment solutions and advising on current salary rates, employment conditions and positions in IT.

Flexibility when it comes to offers

According to Djinni, 47% of developers have changed jobs this year. At the same time, there is a large gap between the number of vacancies and candidates. What does this indicator tell employers?

• Candidates are ready to consider offers and change jobs. The main thing is to reach out and offer a good vacancy.
• The market is full of other vacancies and companies. The competition for tech talent is getting heated and the smallest mistake may cost you a candidate.

The ITExpert team has organised its own survey about the main points that affect a candidate’s decision about a job offer. Here are some characteristics of the offers that are more likely to be accepted:

• Flexible budget. You need to be ready to offer candidates such a salary that would make changing their job an appealing prospect.
• Domain / project. Relevant, interesting, or significant projects are more likely to be considered. Developers usually show more interest in GameDev, FinTech, Healthcare, AI, Blockchain fields.
• Cutting edge and relevant technologies. Vacancy stacks containing Falcon or Java EE are harder to fill than with Laravel or the latest versions of Java.
• Hybrid work format. Candidates like to have the opportunity to work both remotely and in the office or to make use of coworking spaces.
• Employer brand. Reputation and positive employer reviews greatly improve the impression about the company. This also includes social projects (for example, charity races), educational courses or mentoring programs at the company, etc. Hence, the brand only increases the number and quality of responses. It cannot fix low salaries or outdated technology stacks.

Some other pleasant boosters for making a decision about a job offer are as follows: a fast recruiting process, good impression about team and manager, well-established processes in the company, high interest in the candidate, and last but not least, flexibility in the proposed conditions.

So the main conclusion you can draw from all these points is the importance of being candidate-oriented. There is no perfect job offer to suit every candidate’s needs, but you can be flexible with a particular specialist. For example, one company agreed to cover the legal fees for a candidate. The specialist had some issues with the cyberpolice. Of course, it had increased loyalty and the candidate accepted this offer.

Salary growth

Some time ago, even in the IT market, there was a clear maximum salary which employers were unwilling to exceed when hiring tech candidates. Now this limit is being broken more and more often. In fact, most of the sought-after candidates are already working on projects they are interested in, having comfortable conditions and high salaries. It is not possible to lure them with free tea, cookies and a friendly team.

It is easy to understand the candidate. He is most likely fond of his current position, but may be keeping an eye on the job market, having raised his salary expectations by $1,000-2,000. If employers are not ready to pay this amount of money, it is okay to stay with the current company. But If they are ready, why not consider such a job offer?

For example, here are the most “expensive” successful hires ITExpert had this year:

• Frontend Team Lead (React.js) — от $15 000,
• Java Team Lead — $13 500,
• DevOps — $12 000.

To compete for IT professionals, you need to be ready to pay them above market. And if you are not ready to do so, there will always be someone who is.

“Hire fast…”

A candidate who is looking for a job, can receive several job offers and accept one of them in 10-14 days. For employers this shows why it is necessary to be faster than others. It is optimal to have time to complete the main stages in a week (from response to decision about the invitation to the team). Otherwise, other companies will be faster than yours and the candidate is unlikely to wait for your decision.

Now, usually, the recruiting process consists of two stages: a technical interview and a call with the CEO / client. Did you decide to imitate FAANG / MAANG-companies giving 2-3 tests and conducting 6 interviews? So you should forget about the flow of CVs of experienced tech candidates, your vacancy won’t even be considered.

Sometimes even half a day of waiting for feedback or a lengthy scheduling process for an interview leads to the specialist ghosting the company. For example, one of our recruiters had a situation when the candidate confirmed his attendance two hours before the interview. 30 minutes after that, the specialist asked to cancel the interview because he had got two offers. He no longer saw the point in communicating with anyone else.

The task of the business is to organise a fast recruitment process which enables them to be the first to reach their prospective candidate. Forget about the phrases “Let’s discuss this candidate later”, “We want to look though more candidates”, “Let’s get back to the candidate in two weeks” … This is a sure-fire way of reducing the chance that the specialist will accept your offer.

Remote is a must

The opportunity to work remotely has become a prerequisite for vacancies. Otherwise, you will have to face a small response rate and a big number of offer rejections.

According to AIN, 44,4% of specialists are ready to sacrifice their earnings and continue working remotely. In the summer-autumn of 2021, many companies came back to office workflow in Ukraine. And we noticed a large number of responses from candidates who wanted to find new jobs because their company made them return to the office. But in fact, such specialists did not have to decrease salary expectations as they quickly received an offer with remote work and an acceptable salary.

Remote work has already become the norm for many companies. Even funny cases at interviews are no longer surprising. For example, interviewers sometimes connect to a call from a car, stuck in a traffic jam, and candidates from a bench, against the backdrop of nature in a completely different corner of the country.

Do you wonder about productive recruitment approaches? Earlier, we figured out how to win candidates’ hearts with professional interviews.